Zuane Pizzigano (sometimes given as Giovanni Pizzigano), was a 15th C. Venetian cartographer. He is the author of a famous 1424 portolan chart, the first known to depict the Antillia island group (Antillia, Satanazes, Royllo and Tanmar), a cluster of legendary islands out in the north Atlantic Ocean.
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Little is known of Zuane Pizzigano, save that he was probably a relative (possibly a descendant) of the Venetian cartographers Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano, responsible for a famous 1367 portolan map.
Zuane Pizzigano is the author of the famous 1424 portolan chart, known simply as the "Pizzigano Map", measuring 57 by 90 cm. The map was first discovered in 1953, among the thousands of manuscripts in the library of the famous collector Sir Thomas Phillipps.[1]. It is currently held by the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA. (B1424mPi)
Identification of the author is not certain. The legend on the 1424 map simply reads: Mccccxxiiij adi xxij auosto Zuane pizzi..... afato questa carta ("1424 on 22 August, Zuane Pizzi..... made this map"), with the part after the last name "Pizzi" smudged, seemingly tracing an attempt to erase and then restore the author's name. The smudged space, under infrared light, does seem to reveal something like "pizzigano".[2] "Zuane" is a common Venetian variant of "Giovanni" (John).
The 1424 Pizzigano map is a nautical portolan chart that restricts itself to western Europe, northwest Africa, and a large swathe of the north Atlantic Ocean, which it scatters with many islands, both real and mythical. The map has notes in Venetian and Portuguese.
Although the drawing is rudimentary, the Canary islands are depicted near completeness, with eight known islands indicated[3] - alegranzia (Alegranza), larozio (Roque del Este), lancarot (blue with red stripe, rather than the usual Genoese shield, an understandable variation for a Venetian author), louos (Lobos Island), fortubentura/fortouentura (Fuerteventura), canaria (Gran Canaria), inferno (Tenerife), and a long distance to the west, balmar (La Palma). It is significantly missing La Gomera and El Hierro (already shown in earlier maps). Pizzigano indicates a mysterious large red island, with four outlying islets, to the south of the Canaries archipelago which it identifies as himadoro. This may be the mythical St. Brendan's Island.[4]
The Madeira Islands, officially discovered by the Portuguese as recently as 1418-1420, is also depicted, with its names quite accurately given: madera (Madeira), portosanto (Porto Santo, dexrexta (Desertas) and saluazes (Savage Islands).[5]
More surprising is the depiction of what seems like the Azores archipelago further north, given that these islands were only officially discovered later by the Portuguese (1431 or possibly 1427 at the earliest). Nonetheless, such Atlantic islands were not absent in earlier maps (e.g. the Catalan Atlas of 1375), with names partially lifted from ancient sources. In the 1424 Pizzigano map, they are denoted as (following Cortesão's tentative identification)[6]: lubrioczo (São Jorge), ixola de uentula (Faial), ixo de braxil (Terceira), capiria (São Miguel) and louo (Santa Maria).
The most famous islands of the 1424 Pizzigano map are doubtlessly the Antillia group of four islands in the middle of Atlantic Ocean, west of the putative Azores. It is dominated by two very large rectangular-shaped islands: the large red Antilia (in Pizzigano's label, ista ixolla dixeno antilia) and, some sixty leagues north of it, the large blue Satanazes (ista ixolla dixemo satanazes, the Satanaxio/Satanagio/Salvagio of later maps). Some twenty leagues west of the great Antilia is the small blue Ymana (the 'Royllo' of later maps), while the Santanazes is capped to the north by the semi-circular red Saya (the 'Tanmar' or 'Danmar' of later maps).
The appearance of the gigantic Antilia group on the 1424 Pizzigano map has fostered numerous theories about the possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with the Americas. The origin of Pizzigano's great islands is uncertain. For a time, it was believed a suggestive inscription in the 1367 map of the Pizzigani brothers (his relatives, possibly his father) might have encouraged him, but that reading has since been discarded.[7] It is largely agreed that Zuane Pizzigano is the first known cartographer to depict the famous Antilia group on a map.
The name of the main island, Antillia, is believed to be derived from the Portuguese term ante-ilha ("opposite island", that is, facing Portugal). It draws from an old Iberian legend, relating how seven Visigothic bishops, fleeing the Muslim conquest of Hispania in 714, embarked with their flock on ships and fled across the Atlantic to erect a new home on this island. Pizzigano, as many others after him, attempted to depict and fantastically name seven settlements on the island, thus it is also known as the "island of Seven Cities".[8]
The source of Antillia's northerly companion, 'Satanazes', the "Isle of Devils" in Portuguese, is more uncertain. It may be an attempt to capture the Norse sagas of Greenland and Vinland, which had begun to filter South around this time, with the indigenous Skraelings as the 'devils' implied in the island's name.[9] The Ymana to the west of Antilia is possibly a transcription of Ynsula Mam, the legendary Isle of Mam, first depicted in 1367 by the Pizzigani brothers.[10] 'Saya' is a bit more obscure.
Whatever his source, the number, size, shape and position Zuane Pizzigano gave to the Antillia group of islands was subsequently copied almost exactly by most cartographers during the 15th C. - notably, Battista Beccario (1435), Andrea Bianco (1436), Grazioso Benincasa (1462, 1470, 1482), etc. down to the 1492 Nuremberg globe of Martin Behaim.[11] [12][13]
There are two more fantastical islands on Pizzigano's 1424 map that deserve mention: the tri-colored circular island of braxil, sitting just west of Ireland, is doubtlessly the mythical Brasil, already shown in earlier maps. Southwest of that, around half-way to the Antilia group, lies a semi-circular blue island denoted ixola de uentura. This is more puzzling. It sits around the area where the Pizzigani brothers first depicted the legendary Isle of Mam in 1367, and that may be the intention. [14] However, identifying uentura with Mam would leave Ymana unresolved. One possibility is that the ixola de ventura is related to the Illa Verde ("Green Island", a reference to Greenland), as is sometimes found in contemporary maps, filtered from Norse or Irish sources, and perhaps already known to Iberian fishermen.[15]